The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    nor were even conscious of hearing them ; nevertheless, they had been borne to the brain by the sense of hearing, and either preserved in the brain or by the brain conveyed to the memory, whence they were recalled and reproduced under ! some abnormal conditions, the diagnosis of which is as yet! undiscovered. What then is Memory ? Is it a faculty of the material mechanism of the brain, or of the Conscious Self, whose organ the brain is for holding communication with the external material world ? This is another much vexed question in Psychology. But the earnestness of the debate upon it is not greater than its importance to our Science. The contention of the Materialists may be shortly stated thus: “ The brain is the organ for secreting thought, sensa- tion, and emotion, precisely as the stomach secretes gastric juice and the liver bile. As the function of the stomach is to digest food, so the function of the brain is to make Mind —using the term Mind to express all of the operations the sum of which we so designate. The process may be thus described. Impressions of things without us are made upon the brain through the medium of the senses. The brain is impressed also by its self-actions. Whether brought' from without or generated within, those impressions are nothing more than certain motions of the mole- cules of the brain, which motions appear to its own1 perceptive faculties as ideas, thoughts, and feelings the operations, in fact, of the intelligence. According to this theory. Memory is a capacity of the brain to reproduce past impressions, upon the suggestion of something formerly associated with those impressions. Physiologically con- sular ed, Memory is the power the brain has to place 2 Mokodttr motions that havelit some former fame exercised it, and this upon the acvidonia.l [133]